Laughter on the 23rd Floor

A ring-tailed wonder of a non-stop spritzer with a dynamite cast headed by the incredible Nathan Lane. One of Neil Simon's all-time best, worth seeing over and over. It ranks with the classic comedies of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges.

I have always found Neil Simon's earlier works far more satisfying than his middle and later periods. It's understandable that comic writers such as Simon and Woody Allen felt the need to develop, having become tired of churning out pungent one liners. The transition from pure comic, to serious writer, albeit with a comic base, is a tricky one. Both Simon and Allen have on occasion handled this fusion of elements well, but by and large the challenge has not been well met by either.

"Laughter on the 23rd Floor" being a reminiscence of Simon's television writing days on the legendary "Show of Shows" was largely a comic piece when produced on Broadway. Since most of the characters in the play are loosely based on a group of writers famed for their wit, the play should have been a hilarious riot. While it made for an enjoyable evening in the theater, one couldn't help feeling it had somewhat missed the mark.

For the television adaptation Simon has turned "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" into a supposedly deeper and more serious work, in his portrayal of comic Max Prince. Depicting the complexities that make up the psyche of a comic is not an easy task but Simon's depiction of Max Prince does not go far beyond the clichés one would expect. Nathan Lane pulls out all the stops, but at times he seems to be unwittingly doing a Zero Mostel imitation. The biggest let down is that despite a group of fine and seasoned performers and many one liners, even the comic bits are not as funny as they should be.

Those who have a particular fondness for the period of 50's television and the tremendous talents around at the time are likely to be disappointed.

This cable adaptation is a huge improvement over Neil Simon's original play for two reasons. The original was one of Simon's laugh a minute (and you can set your watch by it) plays with a big problem: it was written as an ensemble piece but one character-television comic Max Prince, who's based on stories about Sid Caesar-was so overpowering it threw the ensemble off. For this version, Simon, who got his start writing for Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" and "The Caesar Show," wisely puts more focus on Prince, adding scenes to flesh out the character and incorporate even more of the legends. With Nathan Lane in the role, he can't miss.

This is a very different performance for Lane, one of the industry's most capable farceurs. His Max Prince is as over-the-top as Lane often is, but he also invests the character with a strong serious side (like most great comics, Prince takes himself with an almost desperate seriousness) that gives the role heart. In between temper tantrums and one-liners belted out for all the world to hear, Simon and Lane have crafted some wonderfully subtle moments. He's strongly supported by the actors playing his writing staff-particularly Dan Castellenata and Saul Rubinek. And Richard Benjamin, who directed another Sid Caesar pastiche in "My Favorite Year," keeps the whole thing moving efficiently. I'm going to look for a rerun on Showtime so I can catch this again and can't wait for it to come out on video.

I have not seen the play, or read it. However, having watched Murder by Death, also written by Neil Simon, I know that this was once marvelous. The man has talent, there's no doubt about that. I am not sure how this got so messed up. The ideas are potentially interesting, and the themes could be compelling. Heck, this could, if nothing more, be *funny*. But it's simply not so. Well, the jokes are occasionally great. We're talking one out of five or so, though. Looking at the guy's filmography, I'm thinking a large part of the blame lies with the director. The actors are all excellent, and they do the very best performances they can with what they are given to work with. You can only do so well with a script as apparently bad as this adaptation, and direction as utterly unfocused as this shows. This revolves around a 50's television comedian(maybe if you enjoy those, you'll find this amusing to a greater extent than I did) and his colleagues. There's stuff about censorship, commercialism and pushing oneself too hard, meanwhile, none of it gets enough development to matter or make an impact. The pacing is fine. Editing and cinematography are standard. There is some strong language in this. I recommend this to fans of at least one person involved who feel that they must catch everything that he/she/they are/is in. 5/10

Neil Simon's play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" centered on the relationship between a 1950s television comic (based on Sid Caesar and his staff of writers, who worked out of the 23rd floor of a midtown building in Manhattan. This group would talk, confide, fight, and go for each others' throats if the situation - however absurd - warranted it. Underneath the zaniness, hostility or any dilemna, however, was a shared love and talent for creating sketch comedy. And it was this talent that bonded writers and comic together and, when all smoke cleared, made them realize that they did in fact care for what they did, and for each other. Max Prince (the Sid Caesar model), and his writers. The writers and Max Prince. He needed them, they needed him. Together they needed comedy. This play was indeed a fine ensemble. Every character is defined. None are short-changed in depth. Would have been a novel approach for the film. Understandably, a film version of a stage script needs some change and adaptation so as to not be a confined, filmed play. When this transition goes so far afield, however, changing the intention and focus of the original piece, there seems to be no point in adapting it to film at all. The film "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" plays like a sequel to an original that was never made (like maybe the play?) The film focuses on Max Prince's relationships with virtually everyone (including his dead parents in a cemetary scene), EXCEPT the writers. Characters who were not even in the play become the main supporting cast, while the writers are left as incidental characters. Considering those who are playing the writers - Victor Garber, Mark Linn-Baker, Saul Rubinek, Dan Castellaneta, among others - a fine pool of talent is genuinely squandered, with nothing to do except occassionally react to and comment on the changing state of The Max Prince show. As a result, when Max makes the heartfelt statement that his writers mean everything to him, the point is lost, because there has been little interaction with them A more fitting title for this film would be "The Travels and Travails of Max Prince". Why this instead of "Laughter on the 23rd Floor"? Because Max hardly spends any TIME on the 23rd floor!